Smartercontent.org Aims to Bring the Best Content Together

Content Marketing. It’s all around these days. In many forms, good and bad ones. With links being still important and Google being more strict towards ‘old style’ link building the amount of content on the web has exploded with many marketers moving towards Content Marketing by simply creating more content. The explosion of content makes it harder to see what content is really quality content. (Off course with State of Search it’s easy, we only create quality content 😉 ) The question is: how to filter out what is good and what isn’t?

Last week at the Content Marketing Show organised by ‘one of our own’ Kelvin Newman a new website launched in beta: smartercontent.org. As a reaction to all the ‘bad’ content out there this website tries to get a grip of all the ‘good content’ out there.

What is it?

So what does the site do? It’s actually pretty simple: either via tweeting or logging in via Twitter and submitting on SmarterContent.org quality content is collected from those that should matter most to you: the people around you. It is collected in the most easy way a twitterer can: by tweeting and adding a hashtag (#smartercontent), add other ones (like #fashion or #seo for example) and off you go.

It then collects all the posts with that specific hashtag on the site and ranks them based on number of shares (votes). On the site you can also vote them up if you like the content. The content is presented in different layers: in new content (newest), popularity (hottest) and a special one: “bestest” which is content which in general is rated highest.

If you want to see the latest you go to ‘live content’. This is everything that comes onto the site via #smartercontent.

A special category is ‘case studies’. The creators of smartercontent.org believe that deserves special attention:

“Sharing content on the hashtag is a cool feature, but some content examples deserve a larger description or some images. Case studies are the most detailed submissions, and they’re created onsite by logging in via Twitter and hitting ‘Submit’. Case studies are great when sharing a link doesn’t quite do it justice.”

How do you determine what ‘smarter content’ actually is?

So what is ‘smarter content’? Who decides what is good and what isn’t. We again asked the creators:

“As we say on the site, OK content isn’t OK. You can see some of the words we associate with ‘smartercontent'” on the image here, but essentially this isn’t a place for struggling blog posts. It’s for content that you can be proud of, content that meant something and had a real effect.”

So in the end it’s us who decide what smarter content actually is.

Who is it for?

The platform focusses on content marketers, content creators, content strategists. And SEOs, of course. Basically those that want their high quality content visible for their peers and colleagues.

So who is behind this?

The platform is created by Linkdex in partnership with 3 Door Digital. They believe a platform like this is very necessary.

“SmarterContent.org represents our commitment to innovation and providing the digital marketing community with the best technology available. It’s quite simply a project that has been born from a group of people who are incredibly passionate about great content and digital marketing.”

And their ‘parter in crime’ Alex Moss (Co-Founder & CTO of 3 Door Digital) can’t wait to see how this evolves:

“This project has been amazing, it’s gone from conceptual stages to beta launch in well under four weeks. As a passionate Twitter user, I can’t wait to use the application myself and get feedback from the community!”

Do we really need this?

The question is: do we really need another platform like this? Can’t we find our own content? There are many content filters out there after all.

As said earlier on in this article: the content on the web is growing so fast that a quality filter like this is very useful. On the other hand, what makes this more special than for example an inbound.org or even Digg?

The answer comes from Linkdex:

“Because so many people in the industry use Twitter and that’s where so much great content is shared, we’ve included some really cool functionality based on the social network. Plus, upvotes work by re-tweeting the submission, which helps to spread the content offsite to new people.

We also think the content is a little different and quite fun. Where else can you have a serious conversation about the merits of the Old Spice videos, or what makes cat pictures so viral? At the same time you might submit a well-crafted submission form, a really successful blog post or an interactive website that really hit the spot.”

Linkdex believes people will use it:

“We all know its important to have a solid content strategy if you want to attract and engage visitors on your site, but actually creating great content on a regular basis is difficult. So SmarterContent.org makes it easy to find and discuss inspirational examples of great content.”

Will it indeed work?

So will it work? There is no way of saying that for sure off course, but the signs are good. The first responses are very good and people seem to like it. It all in the end depends on the quality. The quality of the content and the quality of the ranking.

There are off course some flaws which need to be fixed and there needs to be some more clarity on some elements but it is still in beta so that will be fixed in the next period of time presumably. It stands and falls however with the quality content on the web. So start writing people (or share ours 😉 ).

Search other topics

Our Archives

What is State of Digital?

In a fast-changing digital environment, it is hard to keep up. Knowing what are the strategies and tactics you need to deploy to become better at your marketing is not an easy task.

State of Digital aims to help (digital) marketers from every level. Help them find their way in this changing environment. By sharing the latest strategies and tactics. By offering training. Using industry experts, State of Digital tries to help you become a better marketer.